by Dan Jolley
A few minutes later they separated, and she turned over onto her hands and knees.
As Simon knelt behind her, he looked up and saw Scott Charles standing in the doorway of the dining room, watching them. Scott wore rumpled white pajamas, and his eyes were hollow and empty. He stared at them unblinkingly.
Brenda had her head down, her forehead touching the carpet, so she didn’t see Scott standing there. Simon regarded Scott for a moment, his eyes narrowed in derision. He grinned, winked at the boy, and slammed into her, pumped fast and forcefully.
As Brenda began to cry out, Scott turned and drifted silently away.
* * *
Much of Scott Charles’s own life he didn’t understand. His memories, coherent and ordered, only started a few years ago. Before that...before that it was like looking into a sea of fog, gray and oily and bad, with things moving in it. Things with the faces of people he knew. Things that looked like his mother and his father.
He remembered some of what they’d told him. He remembered what they said he was. Child of evil—taken by the Devil, soul was gone, gone and eaten, had to send the body after it. Bad thing. Rotten thing.
The thing with his mother’s face was named Claire.
Claire came back to him every once in a while, up out of the oily gray fog while he slept, and she’d put him back under the floor. Down under the floor, with the things he couldn’t see, and he couldn’t move because of the thick silver tape around his arms and legs, and one time she and the thing with his father’s face left him down there for three days, and when they came back to get him a spider had built a nest over his left eye and he couldn’t scream anymore. After that they wrapped him up in plastic before they put him down there.
The thing with his father’s face was named Emmett.
Emmett’s hair was all white, not white like snow but white like worms under rocks, white like the giant hard worm that he only showed Scott when Claire had gone away out of the house.
Mr. Vessler made all of it stop, though...he pulled Scott up out of the oily fog and made the things with his parents’ faces go away, and gave him a good bed to sleep in, and food that didn’t smell bad. Mr. Vessler’s hair was black. He didn’t look anything like Emmett.
Simon’s hair was black, too, but Scott had seen...he’d seen the white, the white like worms, like giant worms on his hands, and...and...
Miss Jorden. Scott liked Miss Jorden a lot. She confused him sometimes, when she touched his face, and he felt like there was something he was supposed to remember, but he didn’t know what it was, and she was so pretty. So pretty, and she smelled nice, and she brought him things and helped him pick out his clothes, and she didn’t smile very much but, when she did, he’d do anything for her, anything to see her smile, and
touch her skin
liked her, something inside him that got all tight, and he liked her saw the giant white worms
Simon
Scott was dimly aware of some sort of reaction going on in his head, but he didn’t know what it was or how to stop it. Abruptly Brenda Jorden’s scent filled him, traveled through him, and his blood came alive and crawled in his veins like a billion tiny ants.
touch her skin
liked her, liked her so much Claire and Emmett and the white and
Scott felt something moving in his head, in his mind, something struggling to break through, to break loose.
Simon and
liked her
touched her skin
Simon touching her skin
Giant white worms, touching her skin, Miss Jorden and Simon there in the living room and
His stomach heaved. He shoved aside the draperies on the window nearest his bed, popped open the catches on the window and pushed it up. Night air rushed over his face and he leaned outside and vomited, as quietly as he could, into the bushes below. It smelled like Miss Jorden, very very strongly, but soon that smell faded away.
If he strained his ears he could hear them, still, through his door and down the hallway. Soft moans and grunts. Skin striking skin.
Tears welled and burst from his eyes, and Scott knelt at the window, his arms and head outside the house, fresh air on his face for the first time since Mr. Vessler pulled him out of the gray—
— and he opened his eyes and looked. Looked up at the stars, and out at the trees surrounding the house, and down at the grass, and he didn’t want to be afraid anymore. He’d had enough of the fear, the fear that kept him from doing anything, anything normal, he’d had enough.
He felt something leaving him, the insects in his blood scraping clean from the walls of his veins and arteries and pouring out through his tears.
Not to be afraid...not to feel the fear...
Something like thunder exploded in his ears, and he didn’t immediately realize that it was only in his head, not in the sky. His blood squirmed and burned inside him like electricity, and his limbs shook and convulsed.
He couldn’t tell how long it went on, but it was terrible and new, and he thought it felt like...
...like being born.
Finally Scott hung on the window sill, limp and wrung out, and felt as if a huge, foul tumor had just been sliced out of his brain.
He stared out at the world around him for, in a very real sense, the first time.
“Oh Jesus,” he whispered, at the grass waving in the breeze and the tall, majestic oaks and the beautiful, beautiful sky. “Oh, Jesus, it’s been just like this all along. All this time.”
With his world pulled out from under him, Scott would have scrambled out the window and rolled in the grass—if not for the ache that replaced his fear, the ache deep in his heart.
Simon and Miss Jorden. There in the living room. That was real. That was now.
Scott picked himself up off the floor and crept to the door of his room. He knew where Miss Jorden kept her phone.
He could still hear them. He knew he’d have time.
* * *
When it was over they both lay on the floor, breathing heavily. Simon had his head propped up against the base of the couch, and Brenda rested on his flat stomach, her left cheek pressed against the ridged muscles there. She still wore her dress, though she hadn’t bothered with any of the buttons, and her right breast was exposed, the dark nipple still slightly peaked. After a few minutes she sighed and raised herself on one elbow and looked him in the eye.
“Well, if that didn’t do it it’s not going to get done.”
Simon didn’t know what that meant, but he felt sort of glazed, and it didn’t matter too much. Sweat and sex and that other strange, strong scent all filled him up. He was content to lie there, savor the prickly sensation of the shag carpet against his back, and listen to her.
“I’m glad you didn’t end up like Scott,” she said calmly. She could have been reading the ingredients on a can of dog food for all the passion in her voice. “He didn’t want to go along, and now he’s just about used up. But you...you didn’t take much convincing. And you’re just fine.” With the word fine she dragged her nails lightly across his chest and stomach, and let a husky tone enter her voice.
Even more glazed over now, Simon couldn’t follow what she was saying.
It still didn’t matter.
“Now. Listen carefully.”
“Okay,” he said, coming a little clearer. She wanted him to listen. That sounded good. Listening was good. He blinked a few times, focused on her.
“I’d like you to do something for me. You’d still like to do something for me, wouldn’t you?”
“Sure.”
“All right. There’s someone I want you to go see. I’ll tell you where to find him. He’s a grumpy old man, and he’s been a pain in my ass for a long time now. I want you to go to him, kill him, and kill anyone with him. Tonight.”
He blinked a few more times. S
he looked a little weird, a little fuzzy, but he heard the words well enough. Sounded like a reasonable request.
“Yeah, sure, okay. Whatever you say.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
In his room at a Best Western in Chattanooga, Tennessee, Garrison Vessler unknotted his tie, slipped it off his neck, and slumped into one of the chairs set around the small circular table in the corner. The door itself closed slowly, and almost latched before Stillwater caught it and pushed it open. He and Wong came into the room silently. Each of them wore a dark gray suit and a dour expression, and Vessler refrained from rolling his eyes.
“You two are really the picture of it,” he said, kicking off his shoes. He pulled off his socks and massaged his left foot, and thought he heard Stillwater take a breath as if to speak, but the agent didn’t say anything. Vessler took hold of his ankle with both hands and shook his foot up and down, loosening up the joint, and repeated the massage and shake with the other foot. He undid the top button of his starched white shirt, propped his feet up on the tabletop and glared at the two agents.
Wong had immediately busied himself checking the room out, top to bottom. He came out of the bathroom, flicked off the light as he emerged, and nodded once. That meant “all clear.” Vessler knew better than to expect Wong to say anything when he didn’t have to.
The poster-boy for homegrown, apple-pie Americana, Stillwater had blonde hair, blue eyes, and the wide shoulders of a football player. And yet, aside from his slightly larger than average build, there was nothing remarkable about him at all, from his off-the-rack J.C. Penney suit to his sixty-five dollar Hush Puppies to his round, slightly underslung chin. Stillwater had learned to play up this lack of distinction whenever circumstances called for it. A practiced hunching of the shoulders, a carefully non-confrontational demeanor, and Gary Stillwater became an unknown face in the crowd. Those in charge preferred it that way.
Wong, on the other hand, could only have made himself look more conspicuous if he tried to blend in anywhere. An inch taller than Stillwater, Benson Wong was whip-thin, taciturn, and stuck permanently with a nickname the other operatives had given him years before. He hated it, but grudgingly accepted it, especially after they gave him a jacket with “The Asp” embroidered on the back for his birthday.
Stillwater and Wong stood several feet away from their boss for most of a minute, respectfully, their hands folded.
“All right. You can leave me alone. Get some sleep.” He waved dismissively toward the door. The two men said good-night and went to their own room, the second half of a suite, joined to Vessler’s by two thin doors in the wall to Vessler’s left.
Vessler shut his eyes and tilted his head back. Breathed deeply, slowly.
Damn the timing. And damn Stamford and his cryptic summons back to the main office.
Two off-the-chart augments out there, doing only God knew what, and Scott had lost contact with them both. Maybe the surge did it, when he picked up the second one in the park, maybe that scrambled Scott’s head around somehow, Vessler wasn’t sure.
What he was sure of was that everything was about to come down on his head. One way or another, Stamford would make sure of it. He’d already started the humiliation, arranging for them to drive to Chattanooga, of all places, and catch a flight out of the minuscule city airport.
Vessler sighed, got up from his chair and moved slowly toward the bathroom, undressing as he went. The starched shirt fell across the dresser, and Vessler stretched. Corded, stringy muscles flexed under his skin like bundles of wire.
He gave himself a tiny smile as he finished undressing and turned on the water in the shower. He’d been practicing the tired old man routine for some time now, with apparent success. No one else in the company, except maybe the physician who gave him his bimonthly physicals, seemed to know he faked his moans and groans. Additionally, most of the new recruits simply weren’t aware of how he’d gotten the nickname “Icicle.” He knew someone would try him, and underestimate him, sooner or later.
Probably Stamford. Probably sooner.
* * *
In the room adjoining Vessler’s, Stillwater and Wong began to settle in for the night. Stillwater had the first shift, and flipped around the channels on the hotel’s TV, searching for something to help him stay awake. He watched a few seconds of MTV, another few of an infomercial hawking an exercise video called “Destroyer Buns,” and finally settled on one of the premium channels, which was airing Alice’s Adult Adventures in Wonderland.
“All right,” he said happily, and propped himself up at the head of the bed with both pillows behind him.
Wong stood next to the other bed, undressing, and cast only a brief glance at the TV. He pulled a book out of his bag, turned on the reading lamp on the bedside table, threw the covers back and crawled into bed. He had trouble getting to sleep unless he read for a while first, and tonight was no exception, but his tastes normally ran to Robert Ludlum novels. Tonight he read a progressively dog-eared copy of Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus.
Wong’s girlfriend of seven months, Patricia, had given it to him a week before, and told him if he didn’t read it she’d leave him.
Patricia, a petite Korean-American woman, taught elementary school and used most of the precious little spare time she had to write poetry. She could cook an omelet that made Wong’s eyes roll back in his head, she gave professional-quality backrubs, and she could quote, along with him, every line of dialogue from all three Indiana Jones movies. Neither of them acknowledged the existence of any entries in the franchise past the first three.
Wong didn’t like being pressured into things in his private life, but he liked the idea of losing Patricia even less, so he took the book and promised her he’d get through it.
Fifteen minutes and eight pages later, Wong rolled halfway over toward Stillwater. “Hey, can I read you something?”
Stillwater didn’t take his eyes off the screen, most of which was taken up by a curvy blonde’s bare breasts. “What, from that piece of shit? I told you before, man, if I wanted to read it I’d buy a copy. On my Kindle. Like a person from this fucking century.”
Wong sighed. He’d just finished a particularly compelling passage, and wanted to talk to someone about it. He would have called Patricia if he hadn’t known she’d already be in bed.
As an afterthought, Stillwater said, “You ought to get your ass to sleep, anyway, you start in four hours.”
Wong took a breath to speak—and froze in place, staring at the bathroom. “Hey, did you just hear something?” He set the book down on the bed next to him, reached for his gunbelt and pulled out his Browning .45.
The TV clicked off. Wong looked over his shoulder and saw Stillwater standing with his own identical Browning held ready. Stillwater’s blue eyes had instantly taken on a hard, icy sheen, and Wong knew his partner was focused.
Noiselessly Wong left the bed and nodded at the bathroom. Stillwater answered his nod and approached the door, which stood slightly ajar. They couldn’t see anything beyond it but darkness.
Wearing only a pair of paisley-patterned jockey shorts, Wong crept over to a position on the opposite side of the door, his tall, lanky body quivering.
They burst into the bathroom and flipped on the light, hammers cocked and ready for anything except what happened next.
Stillwater had time to observe that the medicine cabinet was gone, revealing a black hole in the wall that led into an adjoining bathroom, before white tentacles dropped from the ceiling, wrapped around his head, and twisted violently up and to the right, shattering vertebrae and severing his spinal cord. Gary Stillwater slumped dead to the floor.
Wong entered an adrenaline-fueled, hyper-alert state as Simon Grove dropped from the ceiling, where he’d been clinging, spider-like. The boy’s face began to pop and distort, lengthening grotesquely, which distracted Wong just enough for Grove to fling out t
hree of the finger-tendrils and jerk the Browning out of his hand. It clattered on the floor and slid behind the toilet. More of the tendrils snaked out, but Wong threw himself backward out of the bathroom, rolled and came to his feet. Grove immediately followed him, hissing and hunch-shouldered, and lunged.
Wong whirled, his left leg flashed out, and the heel of his foot caught Grove’s temple with a thick wet crunching sound. Grove staggered and toppled over, but the finger-tendrils bunched underneath him and supported him on a bizarre coiling cushion. He trembled and got back to his feet, his skull re-shaping itself, and Wong felt a sharp spear of panic.
Grove brought one arm forward, the tendrils twitching and writhing, but Wong stepped inside the boy’s reach and struck him three times, crack crack crack, twice to the face and once in the center of his chest.
Grove staggered again, and Wong realized he himself was bleeding.
Four of the weird spines that had replaced Grove’s teeth had broken off and rammed into his forearm. He didn’t feel the pain yet, and didn’t have any time to, as Grove hissed and rushed in again.
This time Wong stepped inside, as before, and struck Grove solidly in the gut. As foul, rotten air whooshed out around Wong’s head, he turned and slid up tight to Grove’s body, yanked one attenuated arm forward and flipped the boy across the small of his back.
Grove’s feet almost touched the ceiling as he sailed around in a perfect tight arc, and Wong knew he heard bones break as the boy crashed into the floor at Wong’s feet. Grove made a pained, keening sound, and Wong put him in a brutal arm lock. The weird, fish-white body thrashed and twisted, but couldn’t go anywhere, and only then did Wong give himself enough breathing space to think about what it was exactly he had pinned to the floor.
He’d seen some strange augments, working with Redfell, but nothing like this. He lifted his head and looked around for his phone: there, on the table next to the TV. Too far to reach. He’d have to yell for Vessler...no problem with the thin, shoddy doors separating the two rooms.
